Sticking to the Beeton track

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With new money but old aspirations, middle-class Victorians yearned to live like the nobs. No wonder they created the original domestic goddess, says Kathryn Hughes

In 1857 a young married woman published her first recipes and household hints in The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine. The articles, like the magazine itself, were aimed at a new kind of female reader – prosperous, socially ambitious and with an itch to know what went on in the best circles. So popular were these tips on how to make lemon ices or clean the family silver that two years later they were spun off into a best-selling book, Isabella Beeton’s The Book of Household Management.

Mrs Beeton’s genius was to understand the desires and dilemmas of the middle-class housewife at